Re: GEN: Dewey Decimal and Reference Books

[Diane Durbin <dianed@TENET.EDU>]

Johanna has questioned the Dewey system itself, but I have a smaller
question.  It is about the way we teach the Dewey system.  I see several
people have asked about creative or successful ways to teach the system.
Replies have included games, worksheets, etc.  In my experience there is
no transfer of knowledge from this kind of exercise to *real* use of the
system.  If you teach kids to play Dewey Decimal Bingo, they get real
good at that, but they can't find materials for research when they get to
high school or junior high.  I take the kids coming into 7th and 8th
grade from elementary school and ask them about author, title, and
subject cards.  They know what they are, can find them in the card
catalog, and if they find a card in the catalog can go to the shelf and
find the book.  Repeat - they can't apply this to real needs.  Yet every
kid knows where the books that interest him/her are - the sports books,
the animal books, the reproductive system - you just choose it.  I heard
lan interesting talk by a librarian who was a K-12 librarian.  She said
she *knew* she was giving kids Dewey lessons in elementary school, and
she was considered a master teacher, but those same kids could not apply
Dewey *in the same library* when  in the upper grades.  Does anybody
think it might be better to forget making kids learn the Dewey system (I
never learned it till I went to library school and still can't remember
the part I don't use regularly).  If we were teaching location skills in
the context of a real classroom unit, the kids would remember where to
look a lot faster.  You can talk about logical arrangement and finding
things, etc., without a major emphasis on learning the Dewey Decimal
System.  At least that's what I think.

Diane Durbin
dianed@tenet.edu